


A Ballad of Love and Loss

by cerame



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Dreams, F/M, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerame/pseuds/cerame
Summary: The downfall timeline isn’t the only timeline where the Windfish exists.Or, once upon a time, Wind had a big sister.
Relationships: Legend & Wind (Linked Universe), Legend (Linked Universe)/Marin (Legend of Zelda), Link/Marin (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 223





	A Ballad of Love and Loss

Link, the Hero of the Wind and Spirits, had gone on two adventures. The other heroes knew that. They might not know the details or what he went through, but they knew he had fought Ganon once, then dealt with spirits. Wind was always eager to tell them tales of these two adventures, but what they didn’t know was that he had had a third adventure.

Wind kept quiet about his third adventure. Not even Aryll or Grandma knew about it.

During this third adventure, Wind had known a big sister.

It was no secret that Wind adored his baby sister. Aryll was still bright and cheerful, even after her kidnapping, always ready to give a joyful cry of “big brother!” any time she saw Wind. She adored him, and he adored her in return. Aryll was always ready to tell anyone who asked just how amazing of a big brother Wind was.

When the group had visited Outset, Wind had been overjoyed. Legend had an aversion to the sea, and Hyrule couldn’t swim at all, not even with items, but Wind had been happy to simply be home. Aryll crashed into him in a great hug with a squeal of delight, and Grandma waited for him to come inside to give him his hug. Grandma whipped up her elixir soup, and just as Wind expected, the other heroes loved it. Wild asked for the recipe and proceeded to spend until midnight trying to recreate it. He only went to sleep when Twilight forced him to. Aryll and Grandma were family, and the other heroes fit in like second nature.

This was home.

As Wind sat on the outlook, his legs hanging over the edge and Aryll drifting into sleep against his shoulder, he closed his eyes and imagined one more presence on the island. An older girl who was made of ocean and music and freedom and dreams.

He sighed through his nose.

Aryll would’ve loved her.

He remembered that day, bright and clear, as if it were yesterday.

_The sheets under him were soft and cozy, even with the memories of the storm still roaring in his ears and his head aching from where he had bashed it against the wheel. Sheets? Wasn’t he supposed to be in a boat on the sea?_

_He sat up quickly, the world spinning around him. The brown grain of wood and steady balance of the earth meant he was inside a house, so… it was probably safe. He buried his face in his hands and groaned, shoving the butts of his palms against his eyelids, praying for his vision to steady._

_“You’re awake!” chirped a friendly voice. A girl’s voice. He pulled his hands away from his face and opened his eyes, and next to him stood a girl with red hair._

_“Medli?” he murmured. As soon as the name left his mouth, he knew he was wrong. The girl giggled._

_“No, silly,” she said. “My name is--”_

“Wind.”

That wasn’t right. He frowned.

“Wind!”

Oh, that wasn’t the memory. Wind turned around as much as he could without waking Aryll and saw Legend on the ladder, leaning forward onto the outlook and propping himself up on his elbows.

“You ok there, sailor?” Legend asked, a snarky smirk on his face but genuine concern in his eyes. “You didn’t hear me the first few times I called your name.”

“Just thinking,” Wind shrugged, keeping his voice low. “Aryll is asleep.”

“Oh, thinking?” Legend hummed, his smirk growing wider. “Be careful. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“As if you’re one to talk,” Wind giggled. Legend squawked in indignation but somehow kept it quiet. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yeah. Wild and Hyrule want to investigate the other plateau up there, and Twilight doesn’t want them to go where he can’t follow,” Legend said, using his thumb to point behind him. “When I left, they were scheming ways to get across where Twilight couldn’t clawshot them back.”

Wind snorted. Of course they’d try something like that. There wasn’t much to see, but who was he to ruin their fun?

“Do you actually want me to stop them?” he asked. Legend rolled his eyes and crawled up onto the outlook.

“Let them do what they want,” Legend said. “If they get hurt, it’s their own faults.”

He sat down next to Wind and lowered himself until he had laying back against the wooden floor, his bare legs swinging off the side of the outlook. He wasn’t wearing his shoes or his red tunic, leaving him in the green layer. Wind was happy to see someone as salty as Legend being able to relax on Outset. Even with Legend’s aversion to the ocean.

Speaking of…

“Why do you hate sailing?” Wind asked.

“Are we really going to have this talk now?” Legend grumbled, throwing an arm over his face.

“Well, you don’t _have_ to,” Wind huffed, “but I thought it’d be better than silence.”

For several moments, Legend didn’t say anything. Wind thought that Legend had chosen silence, the jerk he was, and had memories of red and blue and songs on the edge of his mind, ready to be drawn back in like a fish on a rod, when Legend’s voice drifted through the outlook. His words were quiet but so so loud, high above the soft crashing of waves against the sands down below.

“I went sailing, once.”

Wind didn’t move. He didn’t speak. It wasn’t often that Legend spoke of his adventures, so he would take what he could.

“I was by myself on a raft, out in that great, big, blue sea,” Legend said. “There was a storm. Lightning hit me, shattered the pathetic raft, and left me adrift for days. I counted four days until a ship found me. I don’t know how long I was unconscious before then.”

Legend went quiet. He didn’t need to say anything else. Wind was a sailor. He knew better than anyone else in their party of heroes what that meant. 

Wind stared at the horizon, a ball of ice lodged in his throat. He had heard the horror stories from other sailors, of being caught in a storm too tough for them to handle. He had heard of being stuck at sea for longer than expected and the desperate thirst and hunger that came with it. Rarely did these two misfortunes intertwine, but Wind knew they happened. It’s just that those who experienced both at the same time rarely survived.

His brother could have been dead. Wind thought of a cold body and clouded eyes, pushed deeper into the waters by crashing waves and swirling currents. He couldn’t bring himself to put Legend’s face to it.

He decided to focus on something else.

“You got struck by lightning?” he asked.

Legend let out a mix between a hum and a grunt. Wind took that as an affirmative. Knocked out for days at sea… Wind knew that. He remembered waking up to a dry mouth and too bright sunlight, the memories of a bittersweet song soothing the ache in his head.

_“What are you singing?” he asked._

_The girl stopped singing, much to the dismay of the animals around her. A bunny gave him a death glare, but he ignored it in favor of paying attention to the girl. He had heard her sing that song before, over by the weather vane. The melody rose in hope and fell in mourning._

_He never did ask her about it before, despite his curiosity, and he felt a bit bad now. What kind of little brother was he, neglecting to ask her what she was always singing?_

_“It’s called the Ballad of the Windfish,” she said with a soft smile. “I’d teach it to you, but you don’t have an instrument of your own, do you? I heard there was one in the dream shrine, but that was taken a little while ago--”_

_“I don’t need an instrument!” he chirped. “I have this!”_

_With a flourish, he took the wind waker from his bags. Apart from his sword and shield, it had been the only thing to stay with him when he washed ashore here. It wasn’t too much use, but it was still precious to him, and he was more than grateful that it hadn’t been lost to the seas just like… just like the King of Red Lions and all of Hyrule, just like the Master Sword, laying to rust at the bottom of the ocean, just like the land Ganondorf had sought to raise back up._

_“Sing it to me again,” he prompted._

_So she did, and he closed his eyes to commit the notes to memory, his arms already raised and the light, breezy magic of the wind waker dancing down from the wand across his fingertips._

_“Sleepers wake, dreams will fade, although we cling fast. Was it real, what we saw? I believe…”_

“Hey Legend,” Wind said. “You’ve been to a lot of places, so you know a lot of songs, right?”

Wind might not be able to sing, but he knew that Legend and Time were nothing if not musical prodigies. They didn’t perform often, but Wind had caught Time humming, and he had seen glimpses of a variety of instruments in Legend’s bag. He had also caught Legend tapping his foot to the beat and quietly humming along that one time Sky played his harp. The Ballad of the Goddess, he had called it.

“What of my musical repertoire?” Legend asked, propping himself up on his elbows to throw Wind a curious look.

“Well, there’s this song I heard once,” Wind said. “I wanted to know if you had ever heard of it. A… A friend--I want to know if a friend’s wish ever came true, even if it wasn’t in this time.”

The look in Legend’s eye softened somewhat.

“Then play it, Sailor.”

So he did. He took out the wand, so terribly delicate and thin but so very, very strong, the wind magic inside _thrumming_ in response to Wind’s presence. He breathed in, then exhaled slowly, and began to conduct.

The air around them changed directions, softly tugging at Wind’s wavy locks of gold. Up, up, up, hold. Return down, up, up, up, hold. Wind hummed under his breath as the breeze swirled around them, slowly growing more and more intense with every musical phrase. His voice may not be the best of Hylia’s chosen heroes, but he didn’t need to sing. The wind sang for him. The air trilled through the high notes and warbled through the low ones, weaving together a tale of dreams, family, love, and hope, each gained and lost in their own time.

The whirlwind around them cried and laughed and sang for memories held dear to his heart.

_“So Hyrule is under the ocean?” the girl asked. She sat in the grass, and how he loved talking to her. She was always willing to listen, and when he didn’t want to speak anymore, she’d talk instead, telling myths of the Windfish and stories of a boy long ago who came to the island and left._

_She insisted that the boy was nice and was nothing but kind to her, if not a bit blunt. She even called him heroic. Still, he didn’t like that boy. If the boy had cared so much about Marin, then why hadn’t he come back? Marin clearly missed him. To play with a girl’s heart like that was despicable. What a jerk._

_“It is now,” he answered, smile proud but melancholy. “We can’t exactly fish it up, so Tetra--she’s my friend--and I are going to find a new land to call Hyrule. I was looking for it when I got here, actually.”_

_“Oh?” the girl asked. “What happened? I mean, how did you get here? Where were you?”_

_“Well, um,” he stammered, trying to remember. “Oh! Right! I was sailing west from the Great Sea and hadn’t seen any land for three days when the storm hit me! I was a one-man crew, and my boat was small, so it was rough. I would normally clear it up, but the storm caught me by surprise, and by Hylia was it strong! The waves crashed into me, and thunder roared across the skies. I was going toward the wheel to steer the boat into a wave when_ **_crash_ ** _! The water slashed at the side of my boat, and it tipped to its side, throwing off my balance.” He tapered off. “I tripped and hit my head on the wheel, and then, next thing I know, I’m here.”_

The last note faded out, the wind slowing with it before it stilled, coming to a close along with the song, and Wind finally released the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. His arms were still raised. After a moment, he slowly lowered his arms and set his hands in his lap, fingers gently curled around the baton.

_TO THE FINDER… THE ISLE OF KOHOLINT IS BUT AN ILLUSION. HUMAN, MONSTER, SEA, SKY… A SCENE ON THE LID OF A SLEEPER’S EYE… AWAKE THE DREAMER AND KOHOLINT WILL VANISH MUCH LIKE A BUBBLE ON A NEEDLE. CASTAWAY… YOU SHOULD KNOW THE TRUTH!_

_He stared at the relief for what felt like an eternity, dread welling up in the pit of his stomach like a sphere of ice. No, no, no, no, no, no--_

_This was real. There were so many details, and he was always so surprised to find the things he had missed before on this island. Everyone was real. The wounds from fights hurt, the sand against his skin was always gritty and warm with sunshine, and_ she _was real. She had to be real. She had hopes and dreams, she had a passion for singing, and grief danced across her voice whenever she spoke of the boy from before._

_So what if the weather was always perfect? So what if the day felt never-ending and the fruit was always the perfect mix of sweet and tangy against his tongue? So what if the fairies looked nothing like the ones from the Great Sea? So what if anything further than fifty feet away blurred out of focus?_

_So what if…_

_Oh. That… made sense, in a sick, twisted sort of way._

_His eyes stung, and his knees wobbled, but he was a hero. He didn’t cry. He wouldn’t collapse to the stone and bawl his eyes out for a sister lost._

_He refused to acknowledge when his knees hit the cold stone floor, cracked and decayed from years of disuse. He refused to acknowledge his wet cheeks and the tightness in his throat. He refused to acknowledge the harsh tug in his heart._

_It was a dream._

Wind looked at the warm colors that the sunset painted across the sky for a moment before turning to look at Legend. Legend had sat up at some point and now stared at Wind, eyes wide and posture far, far too tense.

“How did--Where did you hear that song?” Legend asked, voice warning him that he was walking a tightrope fit for a fairy.

“Like I said, from a friend,” Wind said. “But--you know it? How? Where did _you_ hear it from?”

Legend looked away, and if Wind had blinked,he would’ve missed the flinch.

“I… You could say I heard it once, in a dream.”

“A dream?” Wind asked. There was… There was no way. Did he--Was he--Wind _had_ to know.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Legend said, shaking his head, and no, there was no way he was taking that for an answer.

“No, Legend,” Wind pressed. “What dream?”

And finally, _finally_ , Legend looked him in the eye, and they both understood.

“A girl,” Legend said quietly, voice barely above a whisper and grief clear in his eyes. “A girl with red hair, a pink flower, and the most beautiful voice I had ever heard.”

“She lived on an island,” Wind continued. “She wore a blue dress and red diamond around her neck, and she sang for the animal villagers.”

“She sang for me,” Legend said. “She sang for the egg, too, trying to wake it up for me. She tried to spare me the pain of doing it myself.”

“She dragged me from the shores when I woke up on the beach,” Wind said. “She was like a big sister to me.”

“She saved me, too. She was… I think… I think I loved her.”

Then, they fell into silence.

“So you found Koholint, too?” Legend said after a moment. “You woke the Windfish?”

Wind nodded, then said, “I think she remembered you.” Legend looked up at Wind with wide eyes, and, well, how could Wind deny him? “She sometimes talked about a boy who visited the island, a long time ago. She said you took the ocarina from the Dream Shrine. She was always sad when she talked about you.”

He snorted.

“I thought you were a jerk,” Wind admitted. “You never came back, so I thought… Nevermind.”

“I _am_ a jerk.”

“Yeah, but not for the reasons I thought,” Wind giggled, though long-buried grief played its way across every syllable. “Then, I saw the relief, and I knew that the boy Marin talked about must have been like me.” He huffed out a quiet laugh devoid of amusement, a smile tugging at his mouth that never reached his eyes. “A dreamer.”

For a moment, they fell into silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It was simply… an understanding. 

Vaguely, Wind realized it was a miracle Aryll hadn’t woken up yet.

“Goddesses,” Legend grumbled, bringing his knees up and resting his forehead against them. After a long moment, he turned his head, resting his cheek against his knee instead. “So… does this make us brothers-in-law?”

“ **_Did you marry her?!_ **” Wind gasped, voice a little too loud and his movements a little too sudden. Aryll woke up with a noise like a startled kitten.

“Big brother? What are you talking about?” she mumbled.

Then, for the first time since they arrived on Outset, Legend laughed. Peals of laughter rang through the outlook, drifting softly across the beaches. Wind was too busy gaping at the very thought of Legend getting married to bother with poor Aryll’s confusion.

“No,” Legend said, laughter still dripping from his voice. Mirth danced in his eyes, as bittersweet as it was, but still, Wind liked seeing his brothers happy. “No, I didn’t, though not for lack of trying on both our parts.” He wiped at his eyes, which had gone wet with the force of his amusement. “But I guess we’re brothers, huh?”

“We were already brothers, dumbass,” Wind grumbled, reaching over to slug Legend in the arm. There was enough force to knock him over, and he burst out into laughter again. Wind couldn’t help but giggle along.

“Big Brother,” Aryll repeated, tugging on Wind’s sleeve. “What are you talking about?”

Legend answered for him.

“A mutual acquaintance, little one.”

Wind looked at Aryll and smiled, and he finally said what he’d always thought. Aryll adored her big brother, so she had to love a big sister to pieces if she had one.

“You would’ve loved her.”

* * *

bonus:

_“Link,” Marin said._

_He looked up from the map. He had been working on a paper map of the island with notes. Maps made travelling easier, after all, and he wanted to show Aryll the island when he got home._

_“If… if you ever meet that boy,” Marin said, “would you deliver a message to him?”_

_Wind made a face._

_“For me?”_

_“I can’t say no to that,” Wind giggled. “Ok, what do you want me to tell him?”_

“Legend?” Wind said, later that night when everyone was full on grandma’s soup and getting ready to sleep.

“Hm?”

“Marin asked me to deliver you a message,” Wind said, and by the way Legend perked up, he knew he had his attention.

“What is it?”

_“Tell him that I don’t blame him for anything. I want him to live his life, even if we never find each other again. He deserves to be happy.”_

"She still loves you."  



End file.
